Dr Vidya Chandran Darbari

Vidya Chandran Darbari

Senior Lecturer in Structural Biology
Head of The Centre for Molecular Cell Biology

School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences
Queen Mary University of London
www.qmul.ac.uk/sbbs/staff/vidyadarbari.html
Centre for Molecular Cell Biology
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Research

Structural Biology, Bacterial pathogenesis, Membrane proteins, X-ray Crystallography, Cryo-EM

Interests

Darbari group is focussed on the structural biology of bacterial membrane-spanning molecular machines (secretion systems, mammalian cell entry lipid transporters) and bacterial effectors to decipher their molecular mechanism required for survival in hostile environments and pathogenesis. Bacterial membranes are the first line of defence and crucial for stress response. Mammalian Cell entry (MCE) proteins are ubiquitous in diderm bacteria for maintaining cell wall homeostasis and bacterial survival in harsh environments. They are however not essential in many bacteria during normal growth. These substrate-binding proteins assemble to form lipid transporters in various double membranes of distinct lipid compositions with presumably distinct substrate specificity and function. The mechanism for substrate specificity is still unclear and how lipid specificity affects membrane integrity or membrane function or virulence is still unknown. Our group is interested in delineating the role of lipid specificity and binding to membrane related functions and specifically the unity and diversity of function across diderm bacteria. Our group employs various structural biology (X-ray Crystallography, TEM), biochemical, biophysical and cell biology techniques for structural and functional characterisation.